Quote:
Originally Posted by Dion
Better than shoving it down the throats of Calgarians without any public consultation. This bridge might have been more accepted by Calgarians if everything hadn't been done in secret.
|
Orrrrrrr maybe, if a couple of horrible/opportunistic city councillors along with a sensationalist press (especially the Calgary Sun and talk radio) that gave a disproportionate voice to the typical handful of resist-all-change conservatives we all could just enjoy what will come to be a center piece of Calgary art and image abroad and used by hundreds of thousands of Calgarians each and every day/week?
Too much input is even worse than too little, because the agenda always gets hijacked by those on the extremes, and in Calgary those extremes lean heavily to the right. Those people that will use this bridge daily are not typically the ones complaining, from what I have seen it is almost exclusively people who will NOT use it that complain, even though they are more than happy driving along their billions and billions of dollars in new suburban road infrastructure to work each day....
Next time Calgary wants to build an interchange in some far flung unsustainable suburb we should let all of innercity Calgary vote on whether it is a good and fair use of the public purse? lol
Perhaps the funniest part is that most every person I know opposed to the bridge has little-to-no-clue about the underlying funding issues behind the bridge, blame Bronconnier (which is laughable), do not blame the province at all (which is where you should really look if the money is that big of a deal to you), do not understand how design competitions work (Calatrava would not have bothered competing for this tiny contract, awarding it directly to him was critical if not for this bridge's design than to the quality of bid that the next bridge will generate when designers can have a bridge forever linked to Calatrava's own bridge on their resume), or acknowledge that good or bad a Calatrava built bridge generates revenue in the city that will likely pay for the bridge itself within a short period of time relative to the life of the bridge, etc. The economics on this are not bad at all, and even if you think they are please stop saying we could have just filled potholes instead with it -- that is not how the province allocates its budget.
And perhaps worse of all -- they seem to feel as an opposing group that if they are not going to use the bridge themsevles, they cannot see how anyone else in Calgary deserves something for their own area of the city.
Claeren.